Murder Suspect's Brother Blames Secret Service

Ben Dunsmoor reports:

Sioux Falls, SD

James McVay has been in and out of prison ever since he was 18.

He entered the South Dakota state penitentiary in 2006 for stealing a motorcycle, and just before his sentence was up for that crime McVay escaped from the minimum security unit in 2009 and went to Nebraska where he told authorities he was going to harm Vice President Joe Biden.

That's when the Secret Service first started asking questions. Now McVay's brother is blaming the Secret Service for the murder in Sioux Falls.

Right now 41-year-old James McVay is sitting in a jail cell in Madison, Wisconsin. It's exactly where McVay's brother says he wants to be.

"He knows right from wrong. That's the reason he wants to stay in prison. He can't do the wrong if he's in prison," McVay's brother Rory Lieb said.

Lieb lives in northern Minnesota and says after McVay escaped two years ago and made threats against the Vice President the Secret Service came knocking at his door.

"In 2009 the secret service showed up at my house and told me my brother had walked away from the same type of place he walked away from now," Lieb said.

In 2009 McVay walked away from the penitentiary's minimum security unit, it's the same unit he was put in last week when he was put on parole.

McVay's brother told the Secret Service two years ago that his brother should never be let out of prison again.
"At that time I told them he's a convict that just wants to stay in jail. Lock him up, throw away the key, and he'll be fine. He has no intentions of really hurting anyone, he just wants to be locked up," Lieb said.

But, two years after that conversation McVay was released and is now accused of murder and planning a cross-country killing spree he started piecing together in prison.

"He should have been stopped from getting out of jail. I say the cause of it is our judicial system not taking care of people like this, stopping people like this from getting out of jail," Lieb said.

He blames the Secret Service for Maybelle Schein's death, because they knew how dangerous McVay was. Now, Lieb says he feels sorry for Schein's family, and says if his brother gets the death penalty for the crime he deserves it.

"I do apologize that my brother did this and I hope my brother pays for it," Lieb said.

Lieb says his brother has been in prison so long he doesn't know how to survive in the real world, and was trying to go back behind bars. If he's convicted of murder he'll get his wish.